Jeremy Carl should be commended. As a Jewish American there is enormous pressure from his friends, relatives, acquaintances and colleagues in the Jewish community to fall in line with the progressive narrative and blame President Trump for any acts of violence committed by any maniac that can’t be undeniably proven to be funded directly by George Soros.

His American Greatness article addresses the elephant in the room, namely, that the face of Progressive Leftism is riddled with liberal Jews who play the anti-Semitic card as a means of pummeling Republicans into guilty silence. And he identifies the objective of the strategy, to paralyze the victim and make him a sitting duck for the sucker punch that will surely follow. So, blame Trump and the Republicans for a crazed anti-Semitic murderer and follow up with the gun control offensive. The perfect one – two combination. Mr. Carl spells out the fact that President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law are Jewish and that the ploy has lost its punch against him. And he also addresses the extreme anti-white hatred that some Jewish Progressives have now openly displayed.

My favorite passage is, “Nor should we sit silently while Jewish leftists like the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg attempt to exploit the atrocity in Pittsburgh by echoing the phrasing and vision of white supremacists by celebrating the demographic decline of white people in America like a cartoon Jewish villain from a Neo-Nazi propaganda piece.”

I think this gets right to the crux of the matter. If your aim is to avoid anti-Semitism it would seem the best strategy would not be to exhibit anti-white bigotry.

It’s refreshing to see a Jewish conservative finally calling out his coreligionists on something that is a divisive and dishonest tactic that feeds an image of the Jewish community that they would be better off not encouraging.

The Dissident Right has a generous contingent of people who spend a very large amount of time discussing the JQ (Jewish question). The ZMan decided to define his stance on and explain his ambivalence toward anti-Semitism. Essentially, he doesn’t share the belief that all the world’s ills are attributable to a Jewish cabal. But by the same token he doesn’t consider those who do believe it to be literally Hitler. He makes a comparison to show how he ranks anti-Semitism in the universe of possible conditions. He asks which would you prefer as a neighbor, an anti-Semite or a methamphetamine dealer?

This is an interesting stance. He has split the difference between the Alt-Right and the Establishment GOP. I’ll explain. The Establishment GOP would alert the media that they were beginning the crusade to make the world safe from anti-Semites. On the flip side the Alt-Right would debate whether the worst offense of the Jews was engineering 9-11 or the fluorination of water.

So that’s the take. He won’t join them but he won’t spend his time attacking them. Seems reasonable. I think the point is that the Left’s stance on anti-Semitism is that it is both the greatest sin and the one they get to define. It’s like the race card. If you criticize the BLM movement because they are irrational black supremacists that use violence and arson to blackmail cities into handcuffing the police and allowing unfettered crime in black neighborhoods and the adjoining areas then you are a racist. If you think that Jewish liberals spear-head many of the movements and activities that have damaged our country or you notice that they make up a large part of the left-wing media and Hollywood then you are an anti-Semite. The funny thing is you can be an anti-Semite even if you are a conservative Jew! And so, this allows the Left to divide the Right by constantly separating off a part of the group as anti-Semitic and shaming the rest of the Right into shunning them. This recalls William Buckley declaring the John Birch Society beyond the pale. Meanwhile the Left is never required to divorce itself from BLM, Antifa or any of the really crazy types under their umbrella.

So I think the ZMan is more or less correct on this stance. You can disagree or even dislike their views but that doesn’t make it your job to police their beliefs. Just as the Left doesn’t sort out their problems between Sharia Law and Homosexuality. Basically the enemy of my enemy is not someone I have to go after just because my enemy says so.

I would say that I’m probably quite a bit less accommodating of anti-Semitism than the ZMan. Although aware that a large majority of Jewish Americans are very liberal and Democratic voters I don’t feel that they are any more or less at fault than all the other liberals and Democrats in the country. And I know of some very conservative American Jews that are fully aware of the harm the Left is causing. My next-door neighbor as a kid growing up in Brooklyn was a Sephardic Jew who had lived in Israel, served in the IDF during the early years, worked in the Italian Merchant Marine and got along in a neighborhood full of every kind of people. He was a proud American and a religious man who was friendly with his Italian American neighbors almost to a fault. So, I prefer to take people one at a time.

But by the same token I see the harm that is caused by allowing the Left to define what is allowable belief and what must be condemned. That should be up to us and anti-Semitism doesn’t need to be our overwhelming concern while currently confronted with the constant harangue from the left about “white privilege” and “transphobia.” We have more pressing concerns than “actual Hitler” jumping out from behind every “Bush.” Basically, to the Left we’re all “actual Hitler” already.